Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for March 21, 2024

“Prepare to meet thy Doone…sbury!”…

I say it’s time to RELEASE THE TORTIE!!! But seriously, some of these people behind this must have daughters! And i’ll just leave it at that.

I think they’re making the comics section as boring and irrelevant as they can in order to justify its eventual elimination.

I’m feeling a bit dim here but … could someone explain panel 3 to me?

(biggest sigh imaginable) I say this as someone whose usual attitude to Doonesbury is “JUST HOOK IT TO MY VEINS”… if your worried about Doonesbury being dropped.. just .. let. .. it.. go. Gary is on Sunday’s only. He hasn’t retired and the strip is still good.. but if it’s between him and someone who relies on the income to keep their strip going… drop it. Gary can rebound, he will be fine. I love him, but he will be fine. I love doonesbury and I shamefully admit out of context if I heard just “their droppnig doonesbury” i’d rally too. But the fact it took this long for the post to pick up this story is annoying. I didn’t even hear about it till Georgia started rallying against the issue. This… is not a thing that should easily go away.

I will also say this: as someone who uses the web for their comics… we NEED better residuals through the internet for cartoonists. Uversal and King Features BOTH need to give their cartoonists a decent percentage as newspapers keep retracting and shouldn’t HAVE to go to patreon. Nothing against patreon, it just shoudln’t be something EVERY cartoonist has to have to make a living. They should get paid a good wage for their work and not be beholden to an industry so under attack one of the biggest people behind them pulled this crap and no one noticed.

Nothing like a polydactyl facepawlm to REALLY convey a whole mood!

I love the mix of expressions on the ladies in the third panel. You can tell their personalities so well.

Doonesbury is another strip that I dropped years ago and pretend it ended in its prime. I sometimes see a new strip and realize that it hasn’t become quite as tired as For Better or For Worse, but it’s still past its prime.

Women are under attack in several ways. We need to band together and raise each other up.

On the plus side, if they do ace out Doonesbury, they’ll take Mallard Filmore with it.

Is Sophie making a power fist?

I love the new Sunday Doonesbury strip but I do wish his old daily reruns would be dropped to make room for new artists. Dang!

Also, Charles Schultz was great but drop him too

I’ve never read Doonesbury. I understand it’s popular, though.

Man I think the last time I read Doonesbury was when Mike Doonesbury was considering backing Joe Lieberman for president, that had to be 20 years ago. I understand that Trudeau has dialed it back to just Sundays and reruns of his old stuff is presented daily. That seems a bit stale to me and the space the reruns occupy should be used to promote and nurture an up and coming artist, not simply show reruns which may have been relevant and entertaining decades ago.

Search for “Was content a factor in Gannett axing Doonesbury?” on Quillmag (now there’s a raccoon name for you). It looks like “phasing out comics that are controversial” meant strips by women, LGBTQ+ and nonwhites, even if they aren’t political.

Panel 3 is so beautifully done. ❤ Love the miffed expressions on the ladies’ furry faces, especially Beatrix’s polydactyl facepalm and Sophie’s half-lidded eyes of annoyance. I can see that panel becoming a magnet. :)

What is that brown spindly thing behind Sophie? Is she sitting in a chair with a ladderback, or is she holding a club in her left paw?

Love seeing Ora Zella’s tail whip cracking.

Gannett-published newspapers like the Tennessean dropped Doonesbury, Prickly City, and Curtis at the same time they dropped all the women-drawn comics – anything that wasn’t 100% in line with their publisher’s extreme conservative views. Gannett is the spearhead; I NEVER thought I’d see the day that a PUBLISHER attacked 1st Amendment rights. Talk about the enemy within!

I haven’t picked up a paper newspaper in decades. And I keep hearing about newspaper closures, or mergers with the others that are left. I try to support the comics here, and I get my news through online newspapers. I still think they’re important, and I keep seeing 1st amendment rights being squished (which is more than free speech), so I will continue to support my local (online) newspaper.

Rarest Sighting Ever of all the girl cats (and 1 of the 4 girl mice), together! Love, love, love. Girl Cat Power!

I love panel three and the varying expressions of disgust.

From Mary Poppins: Well Done Sister Suffragette

We lady cats showing our concern,

Are standing up now to take our turn!

There are cartoons we love each and every day

But more and more they are discontinued!

…….

Cast off the attitudes of yesterday!

Sending our stories into the fray!

Our kittens’ kittens will adore us

And they’ll sing in grateful chorus

Well done, sister cartoonists!

…….

From Beatrix to Baba Mouse

One hears the angry hiss!

Our cartoons are disappearing now

We won’t put up with this!

The time has come for newer stories

And some cartoons to retire!

The voice of the readers should be heard and spread like wildfire!

…….

No more the quiet and obedient kitties, we!

We’re meowing with our voice militantly!

Never you fear!

…….

Cast off the attitudes of yesterday!

Sending our stories into the fray!

Our kittens’ kittens will adore us

And they’ll sing in grateful chorus

Well done, sister cartoonists!

I don’t know about adding or dropping comic strips from the newspapers. We all know the demographics on who reads the newspapers or not. Why can’t the newspapers spread out the comics like some newspapers did years ago? Put the political comics in the political section, the sports comics in the sports section, etc. and the rest in the comic section, or expand the comics page or put the overflow in the classifieds section since that page has shrunk also. It might take another generation before somebody figures out what people want in comics. ☹️ This comic is worthy of a front comic page or headliner because this is just pure funny!!! ❤️ ☺️

I pay a yearly fee to play online games. I don’t play all of them, maybe a quarter of them. I would pay the same for a comics site if they had ones I wanted to read.

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

At the Royal Palace

Burt-Ra: So you want us to create a kind of device that will enable you to print out many copies of papyrus in a short amount of time?

Puckmosis: Yes. We would need the help of you and the builders for the machine, and we need the Artisans to make the letters for printing.

Sophititi: I can design all sorts of letters, and make sculptures of them. I may need some help with carving them and making them out of metal.

Iggy: Don’t worry. I can do lots with wood.

Iron Glove: And if it’s metal work you need, I’m your chipmunk.

Elvis-Anum: This could be a great breakthrough. It is rather grueling writing out copy after copy of The Daily Scroll.

Bea: Let’s get started!

I would buy a t-shirt with panel 3 or 4 on it! The ladies’ expressions are priceless.

Well yes, how dare Doonsbury say slavery was the cause of the Civil War. That hurts the fee fees of people who want to bring it back. /s

They already got Non Sequitur.

Panel three is very accurate. People tend to misinterpret an issue every so often.

They can have doonsbury it stopped being funny years ago> I used to love how Gary was unbias and would make fun of both sides now he is just one sided and seems more bitter than funny. But thats my opinion. Just Leave BCN alone

Eh, I always thought Doonesbury was overrated anyway.

Leave our comics alone!!!

Doonsebury is mostly reruns.

Okay, dumb question alert: does allowing advertisements on GC (versus using an ad blocker) benefit or help pay the cartoonists in any way, or just the GC site itself?

Lee Enterprises and Gannett have both eliminated new, fresh comics (many female created) to go to old, stale rerun comics in all of their papers. As I did with Lee Enterprises, I protested with an email to Gannett and never received a response and the changes remain. I think if we want change, it’s going to take a large number of protests to make it happen.

I like Saturdays and Sundays the best.

I wake up late (around 6:00 a.m.) and make a pot of my special weekend coffee (medium roast, with a hint of chocolate in it). I and the furballs go to the desk and assume our positions. Me in the chair. Holmes on the back of the chair. Hamilton is on the right side of the desk, and Mittens is on the left side of the desk. If we are lucky, Belle will wander down and meow at me all the news for the day and any things I need to do for her, based on her observations.

We always start the day with BCN. I look at the strip and then read my friends’ comments on the Orb. Once in a while, I will send a link to people who might get a particular kick out of Elvis, Pucky, and Lupin’s antics. Between the strip and the comments, I get a contented feeling that the world, no matter what is going on, will ultimately be okay.

I am telling you this because, ultimately, it is people like you and me who will drive readers to strips like BCN or Phoebe. As a medium, the print newspaper model is no longer viable if, for no other reason, print news is environmentally unfriendly. However, suppose we support artists like Georgia, Dana Simpson, or the next Cathy Guisewite that comes along. In that case, I hope some enterprising group will realize this is an excellent market to support; they will pay a fair wage for these artist’s work and market cartoon strips to the next generation.

Not pulling any punches!

Women need the opportunity to prove that they can be as unfunny as men.

OT – Scaeva

Panel 4 reminds me of First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemoller.

Baba knows things.

If they’re cutting Karen Moy’s “Mary Worth” or the new “Mark Trail” or the Six Chix, good riddance. They are all embarrassments to the proud tradition of comic strip art and storytelling.

What’s the purple thing Sophie is holding? Is it supposed to be a marker (since the writing on the poster is purple?

I wouldn’t even notice if Doonesbury were gone.

OT: Wonderful excellent joyful good news! Nemo the erstwhile yard kitten has been ADOPTED!

Callooh! Callay!! Huzzah!!!

OZ Poofytail!

OT: Fotis update

Almost a year ago I wrote about a local cat who had been seriously burned in a horrendous case of animal abuse. All of his fur has grown back and he is enjoying life in a foster home. The news report said he enjoys playing with toys and sleeping next to his foster family. They still haven’t found the monster who did this.

its supposed to be some new liberal comic

PSA ANNOUNCEMENT, OT:

Is Gannett a source (someone mentioned AP?) or a conglomerate buying up small papers? From reading this, it looks like Gannett has taken lessons from Larry Ellison – He killed off Sun after buying it; and threatened to do that to People Soft. The PS folks fought – even going to court and forcing him to state/sign that he just wanted to combine with them. So he did – but killed off the reason PS was so popular, that it could run on any OS/DB platform, so now it’s just Unix/Oracle.